“The
creation of Israel in 1948 changed political and
border arrangements between independent states
that had existed for centuries.”

FACT

The boundaries of Middle East countries
were arbitrarily fixed by the Western powers after
Turkey was defeated in World War I and the French
and British mandates were set
up. The areas allotted to Israel under the UN partition plan had
all been under the control of the Ottomans, who had ruled
Palestine from 1517 until 1917.

When Turkey was defeated in World
War I, the French took over the area now known as
Lebanon and Syria. The British assumed control of
Palestine and Iraq. In 1926, the borders were redrawn
and Lebanon was separated from Syria.

Britain installed the Emir Faisal,
who had been deposed by the French in Syria, as ruler
of the new kingdom of Iraq. In 1922, the British
created the emirate of Transjordan, which incorporated
all of Palestine east of the Jordan River. This was
done so that the Emir Abdullah, whose family had
been defeated in tribal warfare in the Arabian peninsula,
would have a Kingdom to rule. None of the countries
that border Israel became independent until the Twentieth
Century. Many other Arab nations became independent
after Israel.1

MYTH

“Israel has been an expansionist
state since its creation.”

FACT

Israel’s boundaries were determined by the United Nations when it adopted
the partition resolution in
1947. In a series of defensive wars, Israel captured
additional territory. On numerous occasions, Israel
has withdrawn from these areas.

Under the terms of the 1979 Israeli-Egyptian
peace treaty, Israel withdrew from the Sinai
peninsula for the third time. It had already withdrawn
from large parts of the desert area it captured
in its War
of Independence. After capturing the entire
Sinai in the 1956 Suez conflict,
Israel relinquished the peninsula to Egypt a year
later.

In September 1983, Israel withdrew from large areas
of Lebanon to positions south of the Awali
River. In 1985, it completed its withdrawal from
Lebanon, except for a narrow security zone just
north of the Israeli border. That too was abandoned, unilaterally,
in 2000.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to
withdraw from 95 percent
of the West Bank and 100 percent
of the Gaza Strip in a final
settlement. In addition, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and his
successors offered to withdraw from virtually all
of the Golan Heights in exchange
for peace with Syria.

In August 2005, all Israeli troops
and civilians were evacuated from the Gaza Strip
and the territory was turned over to the control
of the Palestinian Authority. In addition, four communities
in Northern Samaria that covered an area larger than
the entire Gaza Strip were also evacuated as part
of the disengagement plan. As a result, Israel has
now withdrawn from approximately 94 percent of the
territory it captured in 1967.

Negotiations continue regarding the
final disposition of the remaining 6 percent (about
1,600 square miles) of the disputed territories in
Israel's possession. Israel's willingness to make
territorial concessions in exchange for security
proves its goal is peace, not expansion.

MYTH

“The West Bank is part of Jordan.”

FACT

The West Bank was never legally part
of Jordan. Under the UN's 1947 partition plan — which
the Jews accepted and the Arabs rejected — it
was to have been part of an independent Arab state
in western Palestine. But the Jordanian army invaded
and occupied it during the 1948 war. In 1950, Jordan
annexed the West Bank.

Only two governments — Great
Britain and Pakistan —
formally recognized the Jordanian takeover. The rest
of the world, including the United States, never did.

MYTH

“Israel seized the Golan Heights
in a war of aggression.”

FACT

Between 1948 and 1967, Syria controlled
the Golan Heights and used it as a military stronghold
from which its troops randomly sniped at Israeli
civilians in the Hula Valley below,
forcing children living on kibbutzim to sleep in
bomb shelters. In addition, many roads in northern
Israel could be crossed only after being cleared
by mine-detection vehicles. In late 1966, a youth
was blown to pieces by a mine while playing soccer near the Lebanon border. In some cases, attacks were carried out by Yasser Arafat’sFatah, which Syria allowed
to operate from its territory.2

Israel repeatedly, and unsuccessfully,
protested the Syrian bombardments to the UN Mixed
Armistice Commission, which was charged with enforcing
the cease-fire. For example, Israel went to the UN in October 1966 to demand a
halt to the Fatah attacks. The response from Damascus
was defiant. “It is not our duty to stop them,
but to encourage and strengthen them,” the
Syrian ambassador responded.3

Nothing was done to stop Syria’s aggression. A mild Security Council resolution
expressing “regret” for such incidents
was vetoed by the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Israel
was condemned by the UN when it retaliated. “As
far as the Security
Council was officially concerned,” historian
Netanel Lorch wrote, “there was an open season
for killing Israelis on their own territory.”4

After the Six-Day War began, the
Syrian air force attempted to bomb oil refineries
in Haifa. While Israel was fighting in the Sinai
and West Bank, Syrian artillery bombarded Israeli
forces in the eastern Galilee, and armored units
fired on villages in the Hula Valley below the Golan
Heights.

On June 9, 1967, Israel moved against
Syrian forces on the Golan. By late afternoon, June
10, Israel was in complete control of the plateau.
Israel’s seizure of the
strategic heights occurred only after 19 years of
provocation from Syria, and after unsuccessful efforts
to get the international community to act against
the aggressors.

From the western Golan, it is only about
60 miles — without major terrain obstacles — to Haifa and Acre,
Israel’s industrial heartland.
The Golan
— rising from 400 to 1700 feet in the western section
bordering on pre­-1967 Israel — overlooks the Hula Valley,
Israel’s richest agricultural
area. In the hands of a friendly neighbor, the escarpment has
little military importance. If controlled by a hostile country,
however, the Golan has the potential to again become a strategic
nightmare for Israel.

Before
the Six-Day War,
when Israeli agricultural settlements in
the Galilee came
under fire from the Golan, Israel’s
options for countering the Syrian attacks
were constrained by the geography of the
Heights.
“Counterbattery fires were limited by the lack
of observation from the Hula
Valley; air attacks were degraded by well-dug-in
Syrian positions with strong overhead cover, and
a ground attack against the positions...would require
major forces with the attendant risks of heavy casualties
and severe political repercussions,” U.S.
Army Col. (Ret.) Irving Heymont observed.5

When Israel eventually took these risks and stormed
the Syrian positions in 1967, it suffered 115 dead — roughly the
number of Americans killed during Operation Desert Storm.

For Israel,
relinquishing the Golan to a hostile Syria without
adequate security arrangements could jeopardize its
early-warning system against surprise attack. Israel
has built radar systems on Mt. Hermon, the highest
point in the region. If Israel withdrew from the
Golan and had to relocate these facilities to the
lowlands of the Galilee, they would lose much of
their strategic effectiveness.

Israeli Settlements in the Golan Heights (February 1992)

MYTH

“Israel refuses to compromise
on the Golan Heights while Syria has been willing
to trade peace for land.”

FACT

Under Hafez Assad,
Syria’s position was consistent: Israel must
completely withdraw from the entire Golan Heights before
he would entertain any discussion of what Syria might
do in return. He never expressed any willingness
to make peace with Israel if he received
the entire Golan or any part of it.

Israel has been equally
adamant that it would not give up any territory
without knowing what Syria was
prepared to concede. Israel’s willingness
to trade some or all of the Golan is dependent
on Syria’s agreement
to normalize relations and to sign an agreement
that would bring about an end to the state
of war
Syria’s says
exists between them.

The topographical concerns associated
with withdrawing from the Golan
Heights could be
offset by demilitarization, but Israel needs to have
a defensible border from which the nation can be
defended with minimum losses. The deeper the demilitarization,
and the better the early warning, the more flexible
Israel can be regarding that border.

In addition to military
security, Israelis seek the normalization
of relations between the two countries. At
a minimum, ties with Syria should
be on a par with those Israel has with Egypt;
ideally, they would be closer to the type
of peace Israel enjoys with Jordan.
This means going beyond a bare minimum of
an exchange of ambassadors and flight links
and creating an environment whereby Israelis
and Syrians will feel comfortable visiting
each other’s country, engaging in trade and
pursuing other forms of cooperation typical
of friendly nations.

In past negotiations, Israel
has expressed a willingness to make substantial
concessions, and the outline of an agreement
has been essentially sitting on the table
waiting for Syria to agree to the exchange
of peace for land. In the
meantime, substantial opposition exists within
Israel to withdrawing from the Golan
Heights. The expectation
of many is that public
opinion will
shift if and when the Syrians sign an agreement
and take measures, such as ending support
for Hizballah and
closing the headquarters of terrorist organizations
in Damascus, that
demonstrate a genuine interest in peace.
And public opinion will determine whether
a treaty is concluded because of a law adopted
during Prime Minister Netanyahu's term
that requires any agreement to be approved
in a national referendum.

President
Hafez Assad died
in June 2000, and there have not been any
formal negotiations with Assad’s
son and successor, Bashar. In
a speech to the Syrian parliament upon
his reelection to a second seven-year term
as president, Bashar acknowledged
Israel’s efforts to engage in peace
talks. “A
number of delegations that have visited
Syria have delivered messages from the
Israeli prime minister by which he is seeking
peace,” said Assad. “One
even came during the Second
Lebanon War.” His position,
however, remained unchanged, insisting
that Israel
return to the pre-1967
borders.5a And
while talking about peace, Assad has
also been building up his forces to an
extent that has led Israeli military officials
to worry that a war with Syria is
more likely than a peace agreement.5b

Absent dramatic changes
in Syria’s government and its attitude
toward Israel, the Jewish
State’s
security will depend on its retention of
military control over the Golan
Heights.

“From a
strictly military point of view, Israel
would require the retention of some captured
territory in order to provide militarily
defensible borders.”

—Memorandum
for the Secretary of Defense
from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, June
29, 1967

MYTH

“Israel illegally annexed the
Golan Heights in 1981, contravening international
law and UN Resolution 242.”

FACT

On December 14, 1981, the Knesset voted to annex the
Golan Heights. The statute extended
Israeli civilian law and administration to the residents
of the Golan, replacing the military authority that
had ruled the area since 1967. The law does not foreclose
the option of negotiations on a final settlement
of the status of the territory.

Following the Knesset's approval
of the law, Professor Julius Stone of Hastings College
of the Law wrote: “There is no rule of international
law which requires a lawful military occupant, in
this situation, to wait forever before [making] control
and government of the territory permanent....Many
international lawyers have wondered, indeed, at the
patience which led Israel to wait as long as she
did.”6

“It
is impossible to defend Jerusalem unless
you hold the high ground....An aircraft that
takes off from an airport in Amman is going
to be over Jerusalem in two-and-a-half minutes,
so it's utterly impossible for me to defend
the whole country unless I hold that land.”

— Lieutenant
General (Ret.) Thomas Kelly,
director of operations for the Joint Chiefs
of Staff during the Gulf War7

MYTH

“Israel can withdraw from the
West Bank with little more difficulty than was
the case in Sinai.”

FACT

Several pages of Israel’s peace treaty
with Egypt are devoted to security arrangements.
For example, Article III of the treaty’s annex concerns the areas where
reconnaissance flights are permitted, and Article
V allows the establishment of early-warning systems
in specific zones.

The security guarantees, which were
required to give Israel the confidence to withdraw,
were only possible because the Sinai was demilitarized.
They provide Israel a large buffer zone of more than
100 miles of sparsely populated desert. Today, the
Egyptian border is 60 miles from Tel Aviv and
70 from Jerusalem, the nearest
major Israeli cities.

The situation
in the territories is entirely different. More than
two million Arabs live in the West Bank, many in crowded
cities and refugee camps. Most of them are located
close to Israeli cities such as Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It
is important for Israel that the West Bank not fall
into the hands of hostile neighbors. The
infiltration in recent years of terrorists from the
Palestinian Authority, who have committed horrific
acts such as suicide bombings, illustrate the danger.

Despite
the risks, Israel has withdrawn from more than 40 percent
of the West Bank since Oslo.
In past negotiations, Israel has offered to give
up 97 percent of it in return for a final settlement
with the Palestinians. Israel will not, however,
return to the pre-1967 borders as demanded by the
Palestinians and the Arab states.

MYTH

“Israels
demands for defensible borders are unrealistic
in an era of ballistic missiles and long-range
bombers capable of crossing vast amounts
of territory in minutes.”

FACT

History
shows that aerial attacks have never defeated
a nation. Countries are only conquered by
troops occupying land. One example of this
was Iraq’s invasion
of Kuwait,
in which the latter nation was overrun
and occupied in a matter of hours. Though
the multinational force bombed Iraq for close
to six weeks, Kuwait was
not liberated until the Allied troops marched
into that country in the war’s final
days. Defensible borders are those that would
prevent or impede such a ground assault.

Israel’s return to its pre-1967
borders, which the Arab states want to reimpose,
would sorely tempt potential aggressors to launch
attacks on the Jewish State — as they did routinely
before 1967. Israel would lose the extensive system
of early-warning radars it has set up in the hills
of Judea and Samaria. Were a hostile neighbor then
to seize control of these mountains, its army could
split Israel in two: From there, it is only about
15 miles — without any major geographic obstacles — to
the Mediterranean.

At their narrowest point, these 1967
lines are within 9 miles of the Israeli coast, 11
miles from Tel Aviv,
10 from Beersheba, 21 from Haifa and
one foot from Jerusalem.

To defend Jerusalem, the U.S. Joint
Chiefs concluded in a 1967 report to the Secretary
of Defense, Israel would need to have its border “positioned
to the east of the city.”8

Control over the Jordan River Valley
is also critical to Israeli security because it “forms
a natural security barrier between Israel and Jordan,
and effectively acts as an anti-tank ditch,”
military analyst Anthony Cordesman noted. “This
defensive line sharply increases the amount of time
Israel has to mobilize and its ability to ensure control
over the West Bank in the event of a war.” He
added that sacrificing control over the routes up to
the heights above the West Bank makes it more difficult
for the IDF to deploy and increases the risk of Jordanian,
Syrian, or Palestinian forces deploying on the heights.9

Even in the era of ballistic missiles,
strategic depth matters. The Jaffee Center for Strategic
Studies, an Israeli think tank considered dovish,
concluded: “Early-warning stations and the
deployment of surface-to-air missile batteries can
provide the time needed to sound an air-raid alert,
and warn the population to take shelter from a missile
attack. They might even allow enemy missiles to be
intercepted in mid-flight…. As long as such
missiles are armed with conventional warheads, they
may cause painful losses and damage, but they cannot
decide the outcome of a war.”10

MYTH

“Israel ‘occupies’ the
West Bank.”

FACT

In politics words matter and, unfortunately,
the misuse of words applying to the Arab-Israeli
conflict has shaped perceptions to Israel's disadvantage.
As in the case of the term “West Bank,” the
word
“occupation” has been hijacked by those who wish
to paint Israel in the harshest possible light. It also gives
apologists a way to try to explain away terrorism as “resistance
to occupation,” as if the women and children killed by
suicide bombers in buses, pizzerias, and shopping malls were
responsible for the plight of the Arabs.

Given the negative connotation of
an “occupier,” it is not surprising that
Arab spokespersons use the word, or some variation,
as many times as possible when interviewed by the
press. The more accurate description of the territories
in Judea and Samaria, however, is “disputed” territories.

“For
a Texan, a first visit to Israel is an
eye-opener. At the narrowest point, it's
only 8 miles from the Mediterranean to
the old Armistice line: That's less than
from the top to the bottom of Dallas-Ft.
Worth Airport. The whole of pre-1967 Israel
is only about six times the size of the
King Ranch near Corpus Christi.”

In fact, most other disputed territories
around the world are not referred to as being occupied
by the party that controls them. This is true, for
example, of the hotly contested region of Kashmir.12

Occupation typically refers to foreign
control of an area that was under the previous sovereignty
of another state. In the case of the West
Bank, there was no legitimate sovereign because
the territory had been illegally occupied by Jordan from 1948 to 1967.
Only two countries — Britain and Pakistan — recognized
Jordan’s action. The Palestinians
never demanded an end to Jordanian occupation and
the creation of a Palestinian state.

It is also important to distinguish
the acquisition of territory in a war of conquest
as opposed to a war of self-defense. A nation that
attacks another and then retains the territory it
conquers is an occupier. One that gains territory
in the course of defending itself is not in the same
category. And this is the situation with Israel,
which specifically told King Hussein that
if Jordan stayed out of the 1967 war, Israel would
not fight against him. Hussein ignored the warning and attacked
Israel. While fending off the assault and driving
out the invading Jordanian troops, Israel came to
control the West Bank.

By rejecting Arab demands that Israel
be required to withdraw from all the territories
won in 1967, the UN Security Council, in Resolution 242, acknowledged
that Israel was entitled to claim at least part of
these lands for new defensible borders.

Since Oslo, the case for tagging
Israel as an occupying power has been further weakened
by the fact that Israel transferred virtually all
civilian authority to the Palestinian Authority. Israel
retained the power to control its own external security
and that of its citizens, but 98 percent of the Palestinian
population in the West Bank and Gaza came
under the PA’s
authority. The extent to which Israel has been forced
to maintain a military presence in the territories
has been governed by the Palestinians’ unwillingness
to end violence against Israel. The best way to end
the dispute over the territories is for the Palestinians
to fulfill their obligations under the road map,
reform the Palestinian Authority, stop
the terror and negotiate a final settlement.